[IceFire]

Ok I've been searching the web on LCD's and I've run into the concept of resolution smoothing on new LCD screens but nobody seems to bother detailing what it is.

The be all and the end all is that I want to know if they have managed to solve the resolution problems on LCD's so that you can play games at lower or higher resolution than your monitors native resolution.

Obviously response time is much nicer to market and talk about...15 or 22 ms is just fine from the sounds of it but nobody talks about the other.  Links to articles or personal testemony would be great

[Liberator]

Why, bother you can get a much bigger CRT for the same money.

CRT=higher refresh rates if nothing else.

[kasperl]

TFT=saving you a few migraines.
and it might be for desk space, or portability, or any number of reasons.

[IceFire]

Reason for starting to consider LCD's:

- low radiation
- low power consumption
- no refresh rate causing eye strain
- space saving (less of an issue)
- digital display abilities

I worry about the long term effects (nothing ever proven but its just common sense to me) of sitting infront of an electron gun that fires radiation at your head.  I know the levels are low but I still wonder.  Its not a driving cause...but I just figure the sooner I switch to a more energy efficient reduced eye strain system the better.

I may not buy one for another year...but I'm starting to consider it.

[Flipside]

I'm the same Icefire, the whole idea of sitting with something called a gun pointing at my face is unsettling at best

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]The refresh rate is what causes eyestrain? I assumed it was the higher radiation.

Learn something new every day.
[/color]

[Thorn]

Its true. I have to keep my desktop refresh rate around 60-70Hz. I jacked it up to 120 once, and it was just painful....

[Darkage]

under 85Hz my eyes start to hurt and i get tired realy fast. But i love my CRT 21inch *****

[Liberator]

belive it or not, my eyes start to hurt if I look at 60hz for too long.  I usually run about 70-75hz.

[IceFire]

Actually there is a general comfort level between 75 to 90 hz where your eyes don't hate you too much.  At 60 its bad and at 120 its bad...but generally your eyes hate 60 more because they can see the flicker.  Your brain does an awesome job at making motion smooth but your eyes just interpret raw data and they see the flicker.

So does anyone have any answers to the initial question?

[Grey Wolf]

Which generation of monitors was this added in?

[Ashrak]

try sitting behind a 60Hz monitor and a 120 Hz monitor for  hour youll see the difference

[Nix]

Maximum PC put out an article in thier latest mag on LCD's for gaming, and I believe like 3 outta ten were suitable, I cant remember the models but Samsung and Dell suprisingly had the best.

[Ace]

Well I don't know about whatever weird voodoo stuff people use to determine what's a good "gaming" monitor, but I've been happy with my 1280x1024 Sony LCD. The only issue is in some games I need to tweak the resolution a bit due to 1280 not being one of the standard resolutions. (ex. 640, 1024, etc.)

There's less eye strain, games are still smooth and look good, etc.

[ChronoReverse]

Streaking is how I determine whether it's good for me.  If it feels blurred or streaks then it's not good enough for me.

[Xelion]

Originally posted by IceFire
Ok I've been searching the web on LCD's and I've run into the concept of resolution smoothing on new LCD screens but nobody seems to bother detailing what it is.

Well I've heard nothing of this, except what most LCDs usually have is Font Smoothing, MS calls it ClearType, Apple has a name for it as well. I'm guessing it just smooths out text on-screen.

Originally posted by IceFire
The be all and the end all is that I want to know if they have managed to solve the resolution problems on LCD's so that you can play games at lower or higher resolution than your monitors native resolution.

It really isn't that noticable when your playing games, not on mine anyway . The 'native resolution' on LCDs are just sharper, whilst other resolutions remain slighty blurry. So I would think when your playing Fs2 in the Neb you couldn't notice the difference between sharp and slighty blurry

Originally posted by IceFire
Obviously response time is much nicer to market and talk about...15 or 22 ms is just fine from the sounds of it but nobody talks about the other.  Links to articles or personal testemony would be great

Response time has gotten better but get one @16ms or less, these tend to be better with games, especially Freespace 2.

[IceFire]

Yes very interesting.  The first LCD's that I've worked with...if you go off their native resolution it looses the colors and it looks terrible...you get these freaky moire patterns all over the place.

Is this not the case anymore then?  Some kind of smoothing or enhancement has been made...because you were limited entirely to the native resolution.  So this is no longer the case?

I do know about the font smoothing...you can enable it on a CRT as well...but its hard to read (despite being VERY smooth).

So things have changed then!

[Fury]

I have Samsung 172X (12ms response time )

Well, I have no complaints over running games on smaller resolutions than 1280 x 1024. I haven't tried running any on higher than mentioned, I believe TFT's can't handle higher resolutions than they are optimized for.

Howewer, new TFT's can handle lower resolutions fine as long as it is a quality TFT. You may notice it not as sharp as it would be if you used the optimal resolution, but if you have a good graphics card or you don't play games usually, it shouldn't matter.

Even my laptop's TFT does good job while I am playing games with lower than optimal resolution (which is 1400x1050), it might be a little blurry but it does not bother me in games.

So what do I think? CRT or TFT? TFT all the way.

[ChronoReverse]

10280 x 1024?  Surely you jest and really meant 1280x1024?

[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by IceFire
Yes very interesting.  The first LCD's that I've worked with...if you go off their native resolution it looses the colors and it looks terrible...you get these freaky moire patterns all over the place.

Is this not the case anymore then?  Some kind of smoothing or enhancement has been made...because you were limited entirely to the native resolution.  So this is no longer the case?

I do know about the font smoothing...you can enable it on a CRT as well...but its hard to read (despite being VERY smooth).

So things have changed then!

I'm sitting in front of a 19' Samsung TFT with a max resolution of 1280x1024. But I can run pretty much any lower resolution in full screen mode, and it looks good (even 320x240 DOS games look great).
Response time is 25ms which is good enough for any game (if you're not a die-hard-FPS gamer).

So...TFT all the way, I would never go back to CRT.